Computational Study of Inertial Flows in Helical Microchannels

Abstract

The sorting of biological cells or particles immersed in a fluid is a frequent goal in the domain of microfluidics. One approach for such sorting is in using the inertial effects that are present in curved channels. In this study, we propose a new approach of inertial focusing of cells in microfluidic devices. The investigated channels had the form of a helical channel with a circular cross-section, and the cells were spherical. We identified the key parameters that influence the cell sorting results through multiple computational simulations using a modelling tool PyOIF within the package ESPResSo. We found that spherical cells could be sorted with respect to their size in helical channels since their stabilised positions are located in different parts of the channel cross section. The location of the stabilised position is a function of the fluid parameters, the geometrical parameters of the helical device, and the size of the immersed cells.

Keywords

• numerical simulation
• ESPResSo
• helical channel
• inertial focusing
• cell sorting